


Cooking with Caspar

by swimmingwolf59



Series: Cashepar Week 2019 [3]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, cooking misadventures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:40:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21613975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swimmingwolf59/pseuds/swimmingwolf59
Summary: Caspar wants to learn how to cook, so Ashe tries to teach him. It doesn't go well.Cashepar Week 2019 Day 3: Cooking/Baking
Relationships: Caspar von Bergliez/Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert
Series: Cashepar Week 2019 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1553584
Kudos: 30





	Cooking with Caspar

“I want to learn to cook,” Caspar says to Ashe one evening as he walks into the kitchen of the cabin they’re staying in for the night.

Ashe turns around, smiles, and leans into the kiss and hug Caspar gives him. “Yeah, what for?”

Caspar doesn’t answer for a moment, focusing instead on kissing Ashe and nosing at his skin. He always acts like they hadn’t just seen each other that morning and that they haven’t been dating for years, and Ashe loves it. It can be a bit of a problem sometimes, as Caspar loves to distract him while he’s trying to cook, but Ashe wouldn’t trade it for anything.

He’s curious about what Caspar’s trying to get at, though, so today he cuts it short, cupping Caspar’s face and kissing him one more time before pulling back. He repeats, “What for?”

Caspar is very obviously still staring at his lips. “Well, you’re an _amazing_ cook, but I feel bad that you have to make dinner every night! We share all of our other chores, so you shouldn’t have to take on dinner every time, either.”

“I thought you were a disaster in the kitchen,” Ashe says, biting back a grin. He can vividly remember a story Linhardt told him about Caspar trying to make soup.

Caspar sighs loudly. “I know, that’s why I thought maybe if you taught me it’d go better?”

“Well, we can certainly try.” Ashe brings his hands down to rub them up and down Caspar’s arms. “I really don’t mind cooking every night, though – I enjoy it.”

“Well, I also…” Caspar stalls for a moment, looking down. The tips of his ears are bright red. “I thought it’d be…I dunno, fun to cook together.”

Ashe grins widely and kisses him again. He’s remembering fondly all the times he’d had to help the others in the Blue Lions house learn to cook. “It would be fun! Okay, so maybe certain nights in the week we can set aside for your lessons?”

Caspar matches his grin. “Yeah, that’d be great! Thanks, Ashe, I appreciate it.”

“Of course – just remember that you can’t get distracted kissing me while you’re learning.”

Caspar pouts. “What! Why not?”

“Because you’ll already be burning things without being distracted, I’m sure!” Ashe laughs, sits back up on the counter, and hooks his knees around Caspar, drawing him into the space between his legs. He grins as he wraps his arms around Caspar’s shoulders and Caspar pushes closer to him. “You’ll just have to make it up to me the nights you’re not cooking.”

“Ashe, you absolutely _cannot_ talk to me like that when you’re teaching me, or I really will burn something,” Caspar says, eyes wide.

Ashe laughs, and they lose themselves in kissing again.

When they pull back for air, Caspar says against his lips. “You think I can do it, don’t you?”

“Of course.” Ashe kisses the corner of his mouth. “I’m sure it’ll go fine.”

\--

It doesn’t go fine.

Ashe tries to start him out on something simple – pasta. Even Annette could make pasta, as long as she remembered to stir the noodles every once in a while.

But somehow Caspar is even worse than Annette.

“Caspar, what did you _do_?” Ashe yells. He’d turned around for one second to get tomatoes out of the fridge to start making the sauce, and by the time he turns back, Caspar has somehow started a small fire and the noodles are all on the floor.

“I don’t know!! You said to stir it—”

“How hard did you stir?!” Ashe rushes to the burner and turns it off. On closer inspection, there are noodles stuck in the burner, and it’s likely those that caught on fire. Based on the fact that the rest of the noodles are on the floor, Caspar must have stirred hard enough to send all of the noodles flying out of the pot. It’s a miracle he didn’t scald himself.

Ashe hurries to put the fire out as Caspar stoops to pick the noodles off of the floor. When the fire’s out and Ashe turns to him, he’s just standing there, staring sadly at the soggy noodles in his hands.

“…It’s okay, it’s your first time,” Ashe says, patting Caspar’s back comfortingly. “I won’t take my eyes off you next time, so I can guide you better.”

But none of the other attempts go any better. Caspar manages to explode lasagna in the oven, burn chili to ashes, create a smoke bomb even worse than the one Mercedes had made, and burn himself really badly cooking meat.

Caspar is the singular worst cook Ashe has ever seen, and seeing as he was in the Blue Lions house, that’s saying something.

“Caspar, I love you, but I think we should give up,” Ashe says as they’re walking out of town one day, hand in hand. “This is the third time we’ve had to leave the cabin we were renting because you blew up the kitchen.”

Caspar stares angrily down at the ground, and he sounds frustrated when he says, “I know, but I don’t know why I can’t _get_ it.”

Ashe squeezes his hand. “Cooking requires gentle movements – I think you get too enthusiastic, or try too hard sometimes.”

“…Give me one more chance. Please?”

Ashe sighs. He’s starting to wonder if all of this is really worth the effort. But he doesn’t want to upset Caspar, so he agrees.

They mount Ashe’s wyvern, waiting just outside town for them, and fly until they find a town that hasn’t heard of their failed cooking experiments.

\--

For the last cooking lesson, Ashe thinks maybe something closer to baking would be more up Caspar’s alley, so he decides to try teaching him how to make bread from scratch.

It goes well for the first bit. Caspar’s trying really hard to be as gentle as he can, and he’s more focused than Ashe has ever seen him. He does a good job creating the starter, feeding it, and mixing the dough.

It’s going so well that Ashe stupidly lets his guard down.

“You’re doing great! For the next step, you just need to punch the bread—” Ashe realizes his mistake as soon as he says it. “Wait, Caspar—”

“ _Punching_ , you say? I can do that!” And Caspar slams his fist as hard as he possibly can into the dough.

The dough mix goes flying, splattering all over the kitchen and across Ashe and Caspar’s faces. Within seconds, the kitchen is completely covered in dough.

“…Caspar—” Ashe starts, stepping forward, but his foot slips on the dough and he loses his balance, falling heavily onto his back.

“Shit, Ashe, you okay—?” Caspar leans down in a delayed reaction to try and catch him and slips himself, sliding onto his stomach near Ashe.

They turn to stare at each other, winded.

And then they burst out laughing.

They laugh and laugh for so long that Ashe can’t breathe from the force of it.

“Okay, okay, I get it, I’ll be more _gentle_ next time!” Caspar gasps.

Ashe places his hands over his face, still laughing. “It’s my fault, I shouldn’t have said ‘punching’.”

“Why is it even _called_ that if they don’t want people to beat the living daylights out of their bread?”

“ _Because_ , you make a fist and knead the bread, it’s technically still punching, there’s just no force behind it.”

“Alright, alright.” Caspar tries to stand and immediately slips again, falling hard on his chin. “Shit!”

Ashe giggles. “Caspar, you are the single worst cook I’ve ever met.”

“Thanks.” Caspar beats the ground with a fist. “Damn, I _will_ make you next time, bread!”

“You really don’t have to keep trying, you know,” Ashe says. “I’m more than happy to cook for us as I always do.”

“But…”

Ashe reaches over and touches Caspar’s cheek. “What?”

“I’m…I’m always _so happy_ whenever I eat your cooking and I…I wanted to make _you_ happy by cooking something for you.”

“…Oh Caspar,” Ashe sighs, leaning in to kiss him. “You don’t need to cook to make me happy – just being with you every day makes me happy. I love you.”

“…I love you too,” Caspar says, but still looks a little pouty, so Ashe laughs and kisses him again.

“Okay, we’ll try the bread again. Just don’t punch it like you would an enemy, alright? Punch it like you would punch me.”

Caspar gasps. “I would _never_ punch you!”

“Exactly.” Ashe smiles. “Now help me clean up this mess.”

\--

Caspar tries making the bread again. He doesn’t punch it to oblivion this time, and instead carefully kneads it with his fists, as Ashe shows him. He does every step carefully and cautiously, his entire body tense like it’s taking all of his effort not to destroy something.

And then, the bread is done.

It sits on the countertop for a moment, Ashe and Caspar just staring at it.

Caspar raises an eyebrow at him. “Should I try it first, make sure it’s not poisoned?”

Ashe laughs. “No, I watched you make it – I know it’s not poisonous.” He takes out a knife and slices off a piece. “Here goes.”

Caspar watches him take a bite, watches him chew, watches him swallow. The taste that hits Ashe’s tongue has a little too much flour, but otherwise, it’s _good_. He smiles. “It’s good.”

“…Really?” Caspar smiles like he can hardly believe it. “You like it?”

“Yeah! Here, try some.” He cuts a piece for Caspar, who chews it enthusiastically. “It could use a little less flour, but we’ll just keep that in mind for next time. …So, how does it feel, successfully making your first loaf of bread?”

But Ashe can already tell how it feels, because Caspar is grinning from ear to ear as he picks Ashe up and spins him in a circle. When he sets him down, he kisses him, hard. “I did it! I made bread!”

“I’m proud of you!” Ashe says, smiling widely. “So maybe let’s just stick to you making the bread, okay? I’m not going through that again.”

Caspar laughs. “Deal!”

And so they do – every week or so, depending on how long the loaves last, Caspar makes the bread as Ashe cooks the rest of the dinner beside him. And it _is_ fun – Caspar was right about that. It’s fun cooking with someone beside you also working hard to make something good to eat. And Caspar’s breads just keep improving, although every once in a while a burnt or splattered one shows up, and it gets to the point that, if they’re short on cash, they’ll sell some at whatever town they’re in for the day. Caspar looks so proud selling his bread that Ashe can’t help but smile whenever he looks at him.

On those days, it was definitely worth all the trouble.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my friend Shannon for answering all of my weirdass questions about punching bread lol
> 
> Come chat with me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/kaoru_of_hakone) ! c:


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